(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>Here are my proven tips to avoiding jet lag altogether. Jet lag is mostly a mind game, so if you control your thoughts and sleep pattern, you will be perfectly fine.

Short Hops – 3 to 5 hour differences

These are the easiest to beat. Once you are airborne, just change your clocks, watches, and computers to your target time. Remember that you now exist in the target time zone. Instead of saying, “Oh, my body is 3 hours ahead,” you now say, “The time is 6pm.” Remember to go to sleep at your normal numerical time.

Longer Hops – 6-12 hour differences

Because flights that take you to far away time zones are often 8-17 hours, you need to be a bit more strategic.

Option 1: Don’t sleep at all and power through to 8pm local time. I almost always do this because I cannot sleep on a plane (at least not without a bed). The downside is staying awake that long leads to phases of being super awake to wanting to pass out. Make a commitment to only pass out at 8pm local time, if your flight gets in before then. The great thing is the next day you should be perfectly fine as long as you get up at a normal local time like 7am.

Option 2: sleep during the flight. Any sleep must be done during the target time zone’s night. Once you are in the air, change your clocks to the target time. Now go to sleep once it is your target night time. Usually this sleep time coincides with the airline’s service schedule. If you are traveling East, this works well. If you travel West, you may often end up leaving in the day and landing during the day. In that case you may want to stay awake the whole time, although you will be tired at the end.

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>621http://jdavidhill.com/beating-jet-lag-621/Using LinkedIn for Students – Get Internshipshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jdavidhill/~3/E4p0RHmJ864/
Sun, 18 May 2014 22:42:16 +0000http://jdavidhill.com/?p=606So the season for finding an internship is nearly over, but I wanted to post this now so everyone can use it for next Fall’s recruiting season. Last year, I had the delightful experience of hiring my first marketing intern. Quite a few students were very interesting on paper, but did not back this up […]

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>So the season for finding an internship is nearly over, but I wanted to post this now so everyone can use it for next Fall’s recruiting season.

Last year, I had the delightful experience of hiring my first marketing intern. Quite a few students were very interesting on paper, but did not back this up with a web presence. When I asked for “social media” or “blogging experience,” I was expecting an example or two. You don’t have to have 50,000 followers! Just show a presence and understanding of how it works.

The unfortunate part was that so many students were not leveraging LinkedIn effectively. The few who found my job posting did not engage with me effectively. This was surprising. Everyone tells me that the younger set are all on social and really great marketers. This is simply not true.

Since it is so easy to present the right image on the web for your career, so I decided to share my experiences building up my profile. This deck goes through very specific things one can do to improve your visibility, credibility, and contacts in just a short Saturday morning.

Here are a few key steps you can take right now:

Add a High quality photo.

Change your headline to reflect your target job or expertise.

Create a custom name URL to your profile.

Write a great summary with target job keywords.

Update relevant job list with successes or a narrative – this is not a resume so be complementary and interesting.

Join Groups where your hiring managers will hang out.

Ask great questions on Groups.

As a student, you have a unique opportunity to start with a relatively blank slate and to demonstrate a hunger for your chosen area. Here is a great example of social media expert, David Meerman Scott, discussing how his daughter used social and blogging to increase her chances of getting into the Ivy League:

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>606http://jdavidhill.com/using-linkedin-students-get-internships-606/Marketing Rockstar’s Guide to Marketohttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jdavidhill/~3/QeHa97gNX8c/
Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:00:28 +0000http://jdavidhill.com/?p=560I am delighted to be a first time author of an e-book: The Marketing Rockstar’s Guide to Marketo. This is a giant e-book of 844 pages to help my friends in the Marketo Community. I designed the Guide to help newbies through experts find and use the best information on using Marketo for marketing. Take a […]

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>560http://jdavidhill.com/marketing-rockstars-guide-to-market-560/Marketing Rockstar Guides Launchhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jdavidhill/~3/L2NGOb-Q0G0/
Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:42:39 +0000http://jdavidhill.com/?p=521I am pleased to announce my new site, Marketing Rockstar Guides is now open for business. The launch means that all posts and content related to the Marketo Guide Project are now officially available on MarketingRockstarGuides.com. The Newsletter is still from me and will continue to be available. The newsletter will now come from the new […]

The launch means that all posts and content related to the Marketo Guide Project are now officially available on MarketingRockstarGuides.com. The Newsletter is still from me and will continue to be available. The newsletter will now come from the new domain, so watch your spam boxes in case it gets caught!

Marketing Rockstar Guides aims to provide the training, consulting, and materials I wish I had when I started to become an inbound and revenue focused marketer in 2008. Take a look and let me know what you think!

The new firm also means new packages for Marketo Consulting and Demand Generation Consulting. The packages streamline my client relationships and provide more flexible options for each project. Check the site for current availability.

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>521http://jdavidhill.com/marketing-rockstar-guides-launch-521/How to Build a Lead Scoring System with Saleshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jdavidhill/~3/2BAp4mtMlcw/
http://jdavidhill.com/how-to-build-a-lead-scoring-system-with-sales-493/#commentsMon, 10 Sep 2012 18:39:07 +0000http://jdavidhill.com/?p=493Lead scoring is a necessary and important part of automation, yet it too often operates in the background or is hastily prepared during an implementation. Lead scoring should be an active process where you continually evaluate scoring thresholds, new behaviors, and where the lead ultimately ends up: Win or Loss. Once you have your initial […]

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>What? I hope this is not a real company’s setup.

Lead scoring is a necessary and important part of automation, yet it too often operates in the background or is hastily prepared during an implementation.

Lead scoring should be an active process where you continually evaluate scoring thresholds, new behaviors, and where the lead ultimately ends up: Win or Loss. Once you have your initial system in place, all that back testing becomes easy. So how do you begin to build a scoring system? How do you know what to score?

The Scoring System to Build Sales-Marketing Harmony

You could build it yourself which would be fast in the short run. You will hear from Sales about “unqualified leads.” Instead, work with sales to build a more scientific system to help them see only sales ready leads. You can do this in three ways:

Option 1:Dictate: You and the Sales VP decide. It’s fast, authoritative, but limited. Definite questions from front line sales.

Option 2: The Focus Group: You and the top sales and marketing people decide. Slower, but possibly flawed, requiring changes in the future.

Option 3:The Survey: You survey the entire sales team and analyze the relative ranks of individual demographics and behaviors. Scientific, slower, fewer changes in the future.

I like Option 3 the best. You can use the first two for information, then build the survey.

Instead of basing your lead scores on what you think you know, just ask your sales team!

You should use their relative rankings, especially of behaviors, as a basis for the scores you put into Marketo. Once complete, you should back test scores against Won and Lost opportunity data if possible.

The survey is designed to elicit Sales’ relative ranking of individual demographics and behaviors to program into the lead scoring system. The idea behind the “likelihood to call ranking” is to discover how excited each sales person in your firm is to call an organization, title, department, function, etc.… based entirely on a single criteria.

I want to point out that you should include positive and negative demographics and behaviors because you will program both into Marketo. Some negative behaviors may not be as negative as you think for the Sales team. Sales will also rank both so you have a full spectrum from the worst leads to avoid to the best leads to pass on. If you want to achieve sales-marketing harmony, then listen to what Sales says.

Lead scoring in automation can only help you on a single criterion at a time. How you weight those actions or criteria determines the total lead score at any given time. Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Lead Scoring can help you further.

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>http://jdavidhill.com/how-to-build-a-lead-scoring-system-with-sales-493/feed/2493http://jdavidhill.com/how-to-build-a-lead-scoring-system-with-sales-493/Campaign Checklists for Marketohttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jdavidhill/~3/esADMewyuhc/
Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:44:19 +0000http://jdavidhill.com/?p=481In preparing my first internal guide for Marketo, I started a set of checklists for our team to be sure we did not miss a step in running emails, newsletters, webinars, etc… After working with other firms, I decided to update these checklists to be more generic while allowing you to adjust them for your […]

Marketing automation is helping firms transform marketing teams into fully accountable, revenue generating groups. Revenue performance management discussions envision a complete revenue funnel with marketers handling larger groups and relationship professionals (sales) handling the personal interactions. I get excited by the possibilities, but it is too easy to forget to ask, “How will this help my customerswho pay my bills?”

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates.

And so it is with Marketing Automation. Just as automation can free up your time for creativity, analysis, and decisions, automation also makes it easier to turn a small mistake into a large error. There’s no feeling quite like sending 100,000 people the same email twice. In 2 minutes. Oops. But mistakes like that pale in comparison to design decisions you make when managing your sales funnel.

Automation firms sell you on how to make your job easier; to manage more leads with fewer people; and to prepare leads to be ready for the sales pitch. Precious little marketing automation content is focused on how your target audiences want to be treated. Let’s change that by exploring how the Golden Rule can help you build a better sales funnel.

Use the Golden Rule to Increase Customer Engagement

The Golden Rule says to treat others the way you would want to be treated in the same situation.

How often have you seen poorly written email invitations to industry events? Or read critical blog posts about mail merge errors and automated “personal” emails? Or you receive a few too many reminders because some other marketer desperately needs you at their webinar?

Is this how you want to be treated? So why are you doing this to your prospects and customers?

Automation and Inbound Marketing Rely on the Golden Rule

In the past few years, content marketing has been re-born in a variety of channels because of the importance of SEO and offering relevant, valuable information about problems people care about. If you help people with their problems by teaching them about possible solutions, then they will start to trust and maybe even like you, both critical for a prospect to take the next step in working with your firm. Isn’t that how you work on creating solutions in your job or at home?

If you treat your prospect list well, in the way you want to be treated on another firm’s list, your unsubscribe rate will be low. If you allow people to choose their method of communication, they will be more receptive to when you do contact them. If you offer your audience helpful content, rather than pushy or ham-handed invitations, they will help you with higher open rates or even sales.

Before you build that exciting webinar or auto-send your company’s blog, ask “Is this content something I would want in the same situation?”

Marketing Automation tip: ask “Is this how I would want to be treated by a vendor?” If not, design a better workflow. – Click to Tweet

The Golden Rule Mindset Will Guide You to Better Marketing Programs

Here are tips for building automated workflows which treat others the way you want to be treated in the same situation.

Asking a Golden Rule Question at each stage of your campaign development or your lead management workflows will connect you to your customers in a more meaningful, human way.

How do you keep a Golden Rule frame of mind? Ask Golden Rule Questions!

Ask the Question: “If I were to receive this email (or series of emails) is this how I would want to be treated? Is this email providing me with the information I need?”

Nurturing flows: “Would I want to receive this series of emails in their position?”

Subscription Management: “If I wanted to change my preferences, is this how I would want to be treated?” What if I just wanted webinar invitations? Or live events?”

Lead Management: “If I were a student, or had a question, but wasn’t ready to buy, is this the way I would want to be treated? How will that affect future perceptions of the brand?”

Sales Alerts: “If I were a sales person, is this the information that would excite me to accept a lead, call that person, and be informed ahead of time?”

There are plenty of opportunities to improve your workflows to save you time as well as make a good impression on people who contact your firm.

Handling “Bad Leads”

One of the first things I did with Marketo was to build a series of workflows to route “bad” leads into buckets. These were groups of people we were almost certainly never going to speak directly to about a purchase. I could have left it at that, however, I believe that if someone contacts a company, they should receive some sort of response to help them. It would be great if we could respond to every student, professor, or random inquirer, but we can’t. So how do you solve this touch problem?

Use Marketing Automation to Deliver on the Golden Rule!

Your automation tool can also send an autoresponse with relevant details based on the inquirer’s title, product interest, landing page, and more. Make this message upbeat, directing leads to more self-help while also providing a phone number or response email address if they really need help sooner. Regardless of how you rank prospects, leads rank themselves Number 1. Make sure you acknowledge their interest in your firm. If you use a service level agreement with sales on contacts, be sure that is clear to the prospect. And be sure to fulfill that promise.

If the prospect is using the free trial button and you screen trial activations, then be sure to tell people who do not qualify how else they can get help. I know shunting such people aside can put some people off, because an email can sound like “We’re too good to help you now, but try us a second time if you have money to spend.” I agree, that’s not a great way to handle people, which is why autoresponder copy has to be clear and helpful. Automation is so easy to misuse, allowing the computer to spit out discourteous, haughty messages with abandon.

At the same time, automation can be everyone’s best friend, including your prospects’. If you have refined your scoring and qualification process, then your prospects won’t be annoyed by a sales person and your sales people won’t be annoyed by “not ready” leads. Allow tire kickers, students, and others to sign up for your newsletters, blogs, and other content. Keep their data close and see how they progress. Make special content for them and automate it. Let them know you care even if you both know there is little money coming out of that group.

The worst thing you can do is ignore a lead because that only hurts your brand. If you dismiss and ignore inquiries from students or unqualified leads, they will remember in 10 years when they do need a solution you can offer. You can be sure your firm will be on the bottom of the RFP list.

At each level of service you should leverage marketing automation to treat people the way you would want to be treated. When someone has no money to spend and needs something from your company, they know they are unlikely to receive help. How much better will they feel about your brand if they do get a tailored response! Perhaps creating a special program to nurture groups like Students or Professors will help prepare future buyers.

Bonus Tips on Treating People the Way You Want to be Treated

Sign Up Pages: Leave opt-in boxes unchecked. Pre-checking opt-in is an old gimmick designed to take advantage of people, because we all know people don’t always pay attention. Later they realize they were had by your double negative phrasing and they will unsubscribe.

Invitations: Please put in location links, maps, etc…the whole package in the landing page and all emails. I don’t want to be in suspense, I want to know if I can attend.

Subscription Management: allow leads to self select the topics, frequency, and types of email whenever possible. Make it easy for people to change their mind with links on your site, privacy page, and emails. You will find treating people well helps you keep your active list longer and keep people more engaged too. Use the Golden Rule and you both gain.

Clear Subject Lines: Write clearly in both the subject line and the body. Tell me why I should care. For webinars and events, please put the day and time in the subject lines.

Avoid Deceptive Subject Lines: Loren McDonald at Silverpop points out several subject line gimmicks some marketers are using to increase Opens. As Loren points out, doing this ultimately lowers trust and reputation—and now that reputation is monitored, you are only doing yourself a disservice.

Remember the Golden Rule Question: “Is this how I would want to be treated in the same situation?” Make sure your answer is “Yes!”

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>424http://jdavidhill.com/marketing-automation-needs-the-golden-rule-424/Sample Email Deliverability Reporthttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jdavidhill/~3/RwFAoYjWg4E/
Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:05:07 +0000http://jdavidhill.com/?p=415Marketing automation tools like Marketo can help you monitor your deliverability and list health over time. Of course, you may want to download all that data into a helpful Excel sheet. Here is a sample report you can use to get started. There’s much more email reputation management detail in the upcoming Marketing Rockstar’s Guide […]

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>415http://jdavidhill.com/sample-email-deliverability-report-415/Global 2000 and Fortune Company Lists for Marketohttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jdavidhill/~3/JO11ky9iKCo/
http://jdavidhill.com/global-2000-and-fortune-company-lists-for-marketo-403/#commentsTue, 24 Jul 2012 16:50:56 +0000http://jdavidhill.com/?p=403Many of us in the B2B demand generation space are targeting the same companies: Global 2000, Fortune 1000, and Fortune 500/100/50. In other words, large companies with complex problems, multiple functional areas, and global operations ripe for us to solve problems for. In Marketo, though, you need to filter these firms out to do three […]

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>Many of us in the B2B demand generation space are targeting the same companies: Global 2000, Fortune 1000, and Fortune 500/100/50.

In other words, large companies with complex problems, multiple functional areas, and global operations ripe for us to solve problems for.

In Marketo, though, you need to filter these firms out to do three things:

Score leads who match from these firms.

Route these high value leads over to sales

Segment these leads for nurturing, dynamic content, or whatever.

And wow is it painful to copy and paste that list in from Hoover’s or other databases. So here you are, the lists, in an easy to copy format. Many thanks to Jason Long for the Fortune 500 list and for reminding me to find my files :).

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>http://jdavidhill.com/global-2000-and-fortune-company-lists-for-marketo-403/feed/2403http://jdavidhill.com/global-2000-and-fortune-company-lists-for-marketo-403/Importance of Salesforce Campaign Hierarchyhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jdavidhill/~3/D53j_0Uvifw/
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 18:29:14 +0000http://jdavidhill.com/?p=363After working with a few companies now, I have seen various Salesforce and Marketo combinations. Each one has its unique characteristics, workflows, and record types. In the end, few things are truly unique, except in how each is managed. I am continually surprised at how few firms are taking advantage of SFDC Campaign Hierarchies. Even […]

(c) 2012-2013 by Josh Hill. All Rights Reserved. May not be resold, relicensed, or modified for use in other works.

]]>After working with a few companies now, I have seen various Salesforce and Marketo combinations. Each one has its unique characteristics, workflows, and record types. In the end, few things are truly unique, except in how each is managed.

I am continually surprised at how few firms are taking advantage of SFDC Campaign Hierarchies. Even if you have Revenue Cycle Analytics or are using Marketo Programs full capabilities, someone in your firm is using Salesforce as the database of record.

So why use Salesforce Campaigns and the hierarchy feature?

Easy. Using campaign hierarchy lets you do several key things faster if your SFDC Administrator has done her job:

Group campaigns by channel, year, or whatever makes sense for your firm.

Roll up campaigndata to quickly see totals, averages, and metrics directly in Salesforce. So if you click on Webinars 2012, Salesforce instantly tells you the total count on Leads, Contacts, Conversions, Opportunities, Costs, and Won dollars.

Grouping campaigns makes it easy to see what you have already done this year and in other years.

Grouping campaigns can make your dashboard or report creation easier.

You can clone Campaigns more easily for each type of campaign, even when you use Marketo Programs. Why? You’ll know where they all are.